We're still working on the ISS with Russia, says NASA, despite the Ukraine conflict.

Nasa has stated that the International Space Station would operate normally despite the conflict in Ukraine.

Despite rapidly growing tensions between their two countries, the space agency has confirmed that cooperation operations with the Russian space agency will continue.

A representative for the International Space Station said, "The International Space Station team is continuing to undertake scientific operations in low-Earth orbit in a safe manner."

"Ongoing station operations include work to fly astronauts to the orbiting outpost and safely return them to Earth," says the statement.

This will include the return of Nasa astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who will use a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to return to Earth on March 30.

In addition to Vande Hei, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, Nasa astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, and two Russian Cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov are now stationed on the ISS.

Cosmonauts Shkaplerov and Dubrov will return to Earth with Mr Vande Hei if the Soyuz return journey goes as expected.

Mr Vande Hei will set a new American record with 355 continuous days in space when he returns home. His mission was originally scheduled to finish in October, but it was extended to accommodate a Russian filmmaker and actress who were filming a movie on the space station.

If the crisis in Ukraine causes something to go wrong and Mr Vande Hei's return is delayed, it won't be the first time Russian politics has kept someone up longer than expected. Sergei Krikalev, a Soviet Cosmonaut, boarded the Mir Space Station in May 1991 and didn't return until March 1992, his return delayed by the Soviet Government's demise in December 1991.

Krikalev will then fly aboard Nasa's space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS), demonstrating how the space station, as well as other cooperative US-Russia space programmes, will continue to operate despite the increasing crisis in Ukraine, according to Nasa.

"For more than 21 years, NASA and its international partners have kept a continuous and productive human presence aboard the International Space Station," a spokeswoman stated.

They also mentioned that cooperation will continue on the ground, with three Russian Cosmonauts presently undergoing training at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston. According to the spokeswoman, two Nasa astronauts finished training in Russia in February.

However, Nasa and the Russian Space Agency aren't the only players, and it's unclear whether the conflict in Ukraine — and subsequent US and European sanctions — will have an impact on commercial space launches and companies that rely on launch services from Russia's Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

OneWeb, a satellite constellation startup that the UK government owns a stake in, plans to launch satellites from Kazakhstan in early March. However, a representative for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy referred The Independent to OneWeb for comment, and OneWeb did not reply to information requests.